1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to method and apparatus for correcting a gaze of an image captured by a camera in a video phone or a video conference system, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for correcting a gaze so that the direction of a gaze of an image of an object captured by a single camera meets that of the other party who watches the image and communicates with the object.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, in case of a video communications system such as a video phone or video conference, a camera is attached to an apparatus having the form of a conventional telephone set, to obtain a facial image of the other party. Otherwise, a camera is located on the upper end of a monitor of a computer, in order to use a computer system as a video phone, to thereby obtain a facial image of the other party. An example using the computer system is shown in FIG. 1.
In FIG. 1, a camera 1 capturing the image of a user is located on a monitor 2 of the computer system. Here, a direction 3 of the camera 1 is directed to a user 5. The user 5 gazes at the center of the monitor 2, not toward the camera 1, in order to watch the face of the other party displayed on the monitor 2. For this reason, an image containing the face of the user 5 photographed via the camera 1 is viewed by the other party as illustrated in FIG. 2. That is, the gaze of the image is downwards, and does not meet that of the other party. This greatly reduces reality of the video phone featuring face-to-face talking. Even though the camera 1 is located on the lower portion or lateral portion of the monitor 2, instead of the upper portion thereof, the above-described problem of poor eye contact cannot be avoided. Unless the camera 1 is located on the center of the monitor 2, that is, a corresponding position of the monitor 2 in which the face of the other party is viewed, the above problem always remains so that the gaze 4 of the object captured by the camera 1 does not meet that of the camera 1. Even if the video communications system is constructed to have the form of a telephone set other than that of the computer system, the direction of the gaze by the user is not directed toward the camera, but toward the corresponding portion of the monitor on which the face of the other party is displayed, to accordingly cause the same problem.
To solve the above problems, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method for correcting a gaze of an image of an object, in which a gaze deviation between the gaze direction toward a camera and that of an object is determined and then the image obtained by the camera is modified using the determined gaze deviation, in the form that the object seems to gaze at the camera.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for embodying an image gaze correction method using a single camera.
To accomplish the above object of the present invention, there is provided a method for correcting a gaze of an image using a single camera, the method for correcting a gaze of an image received from the camera comprising the steps of: (a) determining a gaze deviation value to correct a gaze; (b) calculating a corresponding point coordinate of an input image corresponding to a particular position in a corrected image using the gaze deviation value determined in step (a); (c) calculating a pixel value at the calculated corresponding point coordinate using the input image from the camera; and (d) outputting a gaze corrected image by using the pixel value calculated in step (c) as the pixel value of the particular position of the corrected image.
There is also provided an apparatus for correcting a gaze of an image using a single camera, the apparatus for correcting a gaze of an image received from the camera comprising: a gaze deviation determiner for determining a gaze deviation value for correcting a gaze; a corresponding point coordinate calculator for receiving the gaze deviation value determined in the gaze deviation determiner and a particular coordinate value of the corrected image in a pixel value calculator and outputting a corresponding point coordinate value of the input image from the camera in correspondence to the coordinate value of the input corrected image; and a pixel value calculator for outputting a pixel value of the corrected image corresponding to the particular coordinate of the corrected image using the input image from the camera.